Pain lingers a year after firefighters' deaths

Michael Torres visits a mural Wednesday honoring some fallen police officers and firefighters, including his brother, Edward Stringer, and Corey Ankum, in the Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago. Stringer and Ankum died Dec. 22, 2010, in a South Shore blaze. (Terrence Antonio James, Chicago Tribune)

Framed portraits of Chicago firefighters Corey Ankum and Edward Stringer hang inside their firehouses, near photos of their colleagues carrying their caskets.

Their names are painted in gold on the doors of the firetrucks they climbed aboard when the alarm sounded, calling them to fires and medical emergencies on the South Side.

Their faces gaze out from a mural on a railroad viaduct in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, alongside images of other Chicago firefighters and police officers killed in the line of duty.

One year after Ankum, 34, and Stringer, 47, died while battling a blaze at an abandoned laundry in the South Shore neighborhood, reminders of their sacrifice dot the city. But nowhere is the pain of their deaths more profound than in the hearts of the firefighters they worked with and the relatives they left behind, who have spent the last year honoring the men's legacies while trying to come to terms with their own grief.

"We're over the shock of it," Stringer's brother, Michael Torres, 45, said this week. "But the pain … I don't know if that will ever go away."

Stringer and Ankum were killed when the roof of the dilapidated building in the 1700 block of East 75th Street collapsed just after 7 a.m. Dec. 22, 2010. Seventeen other firefighters were injured.

On Wednesday, a day before the one-year anniversary, the Cook County state's attorney's office petitioned to hold Chuck M. Dai, the building's owner, in criminal contempt for failing to comply with court orders to repair and secure the structure before the fatal fire.

Records show the city had cited Dai for 14 separate code violations before the fire, but the building was never repaired or torn down. Relatives of Ankum and Stringer have filed wrongful-death lawsuits against the owner.

A federal report released in July found that an insufficient number of radios, poor communications between firefighters and their commanders, and the absence of a system to inform the Fire Department about dangerous buildings contributed to Stringer's and Ankum's deaths.

Although the Fire Department disagreed with some of the report's findings, it now requires that firefighters keep commanders better informed about conditions inside a burning building and that tags identifying every firefighter assigned to a firetruck be kept on each vehicle, officials have said.

For the firefighters who knew Ankum and Stringer, their deaths serve as a reminder of the danger inherent in firefighting, an example of how a seemingly routine call can quickly become a life-threatening situation, their colleagues said.

"It's always in the back of your mind," said Don Rose, a firefighter who worked with Ankum, as he sat at a table with other firefighters at their firehouse Sunday night. "Always."

Like most firefighters, Stringer and Ankum had two families — their relatives and the fellow firefighters they worked, laughed and lived with on the job.

Ankum, a former police officer who had been a firefighter for about 18 months, was always the first member of his shift to arrive for duty, walking around the firehouse with a clipboard, taking inventory of supplies, his co-workers said.

"He had his act together for a young fella," said firefighter Malick Bilal, sitting across the table from Rose. "He was a big, huge loss for the community and the firehouse."

Gerald Glover, Ankum's half-brother and a Fire Department lieutenant, bought a house across the street from Ankum's in the Chatham neighborhood a few months before Ankum died. Glover said he still can't bring himself to use his home's front door because the pain of seeing the house Ankum and his wife, Demeka, shared with their three children is too much.

"Everyone is trying to move on with their lives," Glover said. "They're trying to make it. Every so often somebody might break down, just thinking of him not being here. Everybody has their days. I know I have mine."

Fire Commissioner Robert Hoff is scheduled to speak Thursday morning during a memorial ceremony at the scene of the fire, now a vacant lot.

Glover, who hasn't been to the scene since the blaze, said he appreciates the gesture but isn't sure if he'll be able to handle the ceremony. He said he may stop by before the ceremony, to leave a wreath and flowers during his own private moment of remembrance.

Stringer's brother, Torres, said he doesn't like to visit the scene of his brother's death, either, but will likely attend a service later Thursday at a memorial near the old stockyards site, where 21 firefighters were killed in a fire 100 years before his brother died.

Stringer, a 12-year veteran, was a practical joker and "a hell of a good fireman," said his supervisor, Lt. Ted Sosnowski.

Firefighter Jim DiPasquale said Stringer took him under his wing as he was learning the job, even leading DiPasquale back into buildings after fires had been extinguished to point out intricacies in the floor plan and other potential problems they might encounter at a future fire.